Prior headliners for motor vehicles include a batt of fiberglass impregnated with a thermosetting resin. The headliner is typically compression molded in a heated mold, and then cooled to attain the desired shape. Such headliners are self supporting, but are also relatively inflexible and brittle. As a result, they are easily broken or damaged during shipment and installation.
Other headliners have been proposed which are more flexible and resilient than fiberglass headliners. U.S. Pat. No. 4,840,832, for example, shows a headliner which is formed from a layer of polymeric fibers combined with a foam layer and a fabric surface layer. The layers are preheated together in an oven and then molded into a predetermined shape. Because the layers are simultaneously heated to approximately the same temperature, however, optimal compression of the different layers is difficult to achieve.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,828,910 shows a thermoformed laminate which is useful in headliners, and the laminate includes a layer of resilient sound absorbing material sandwiched between two layers of reinforcing materials. The method of making such laminates includes introducing the layers into a heated mold and thermoforming the layers together to achieve a desired shape. As with the previous example, however, optimal compression of the different layers is difficult to achieve because the layers are all heated to approximately the same temperature. Furthermore, because the reinforcing materials are different in composition than the sound absorbing material, the laminate is not recyclable as a unit.